As tournaments go, I'll be posting my record. I don't consider myself to have a bias, but data is data.
At WKU (the first and so far only tournament at which I have judged this year), I voted affirmative every time. I strongly believe that this is not due to an inherent affirmative bias, but due to a problem in the LD community of negative debaters opting not to collapse to strategic arguments, leaving them open to solid 2AR rebuttals. For many of the rounds judged there, I would have been happy to vote neg on several positions if they had been slightly better-developed, but find that when the negative goes for everything, the Affirmative is able to control a lot of the story in the 2AR. Strategically collapse in front of me, or else you will lose on the neg.
WKU Round Robin: Aff - 2; Neg - 0
WKU Round 3: Voted for Lafayette College ZS as the Affirmative over Hillsdale College KA
WKU Round 4: Voted for Marshall University MO as the Affirmative over WKU RH.
WKU Round 5: Voted for Hillsdale BH as the Affirmative over WKU JC
WKU Round 6: Voted for Lafayette College JH as the Affirmative over WKU CE
WKU QF - Voted for Hillsdale IH as the Affirmative over WKU TP.
Because I'm only a couple years out of competition and this is my first year professionally coaching, my paradigm is likely going to change between tournaments or even rounds. As such, you should ALWAYS ask for a paradigm from me before the round starts. You should also always use full prep time in front of me; I have seen debaters lose on obvious arguments because they get cocky - because of the frequency with which this happens, I now have a policy of deducting speaker points from anybody who fails to use their full prep time before the end of the round.
Stock issues:
I believe that the affirmative has a basic burden to meet and prove all the stock issues, and that they cannot be turned without a kritikal framework. I am willing to buy kritikal turns from the affirmative, but they must be designed in such a way as to afford room for debate in the 1NR, since otherwise the affirmative can answer any rebuttals in the 2AR and skew the negative. In particular, I absolutely will not vote for new arguments in the 2AR, nor will I grant new warrants to arguments on the matter. The fact that you're topical, that you solved, etc., is simply demonstration that you met a burden of proof. The neg can run those positions and kick all they like, since the neg is testing the Affirmative's job. Full stop.
I am an educator at heart and am especially concerned with weighing the relationship between the standards debate and how we engage in debate; even though debate is a game, it is a game justified by its educational role, and overtures to that effect will be generally persuasive for me. Regarding theory debates and K debates, be sure that your framework addresses the capacity of debate to educate students in and out of round. I'm less concerned with abusively non-topical cases that force people to debate hard, and more concerned with abusively non-topical cases that make depth of discussion impossible on a fundamental level.
I have yet to hear a convincing "you have lit, therefore no abuse" claim. I still accept these if the neg does not contest them.
On solvency in particular: I grant the negative structural bias here, meaning that the Aff has to give me a definite, certain impact. I don't like arguments such as "risk of solvency," since those really just come across to me as an attempt to jack presumption belonging to the neg. If the round turns out to be a total clusterfuck, I won't pass a plan based on ambiguous risk of solvency. So focus on an impact that you can actually win, rather than muddling the round and trying to claim victory from it. Uncertainty is neg ground.
Off-case debates:
I need clarity on heg scenarios - hard power and soft power aren't purely interchangeable, and several heg scenarios treat this as if it were the case.
With politics, I need to know with whom political capital is spent. Political capital isn't totally interchangeable between groups, and a clear PC scenario is important to me voting on tix. Not to mention that I think a lot of tix debates really have underlying differences in how fiat functions related to plan passage; if you can be more explicit on what you think fiat does and doesn't grant in the policy realm, that'll help you a lot.
For the Kritik, I need a clear theory of the ballot. Simply indicting the plan and/or the rhetoric isn't enough. Because the ballot traditionally assumes a world-comparison re: fiat, the kritik needs to establish not only a basic framework but an articulation of how I can decide who wins or loses the round. I like kritiks in general, but need cards that are more focused on logical proofs than on sharp rhetoric. I've seen too many bad K cards that just make broad, sweeping assertions and are chosen for fiery rhetoric rather than specific indicts of a plan in a nuanced fashion. The K, for me, then, is like anime: I have nothing against the genre, but there's a lot of absolute crap in the genre, and there's nothing worse than sitting through a bad one.
On-case debates:
I enjoy a debate with critical impacts, but I still need a theoretical framework through which critical impacts interact with more traditional quantifiable impacts. "Is the root cause" won't do, but "is foundational to further reform" has a better story.
If there is terminal defense on the case, I don't vote for "risk." Risk is destroyed if defense is terminal and I'll default to the negative on presumption in such a case. However, heavily mitigated solvency still leaves room for improvement, and absent offense (or if offense is even murkier), I vote for the potential to improve the world through fiat.
I'll update this later, but I thought I'd get it started during work.
How to earn speaker points:
1) Interact with the evidence, and actually read your opponent's evidence.
2) Crystallize the round without oversimplifying.
3) Be honest about the limitations of your own evidence, and account for it when weighing.
4) Collapse to winning positions and leverage them.
5) Use full prep time.
6) Tell a clear story for each position.
7) Don't be dismissive of your opponent; apply the principle of charity and win by having more nuance than them.
8) Use cross-ex profitably; destroy a position rather than blipping all over the flow.
If you have any questions, or if you feel that my judging paradigm is incomplete, please feel free to email me at trainey@wileyc.edu.
At WKU (the first and so far only tournament at which I have judged this year), I voted affirmative every time. I strongly believe that this is not due to an inherent affirmative bias, but due to a problem in the LD community of negative debaters opting not to collapse to strategic arguments, leaving them open to solid 2AR rebuttals. For many of the rounds judged there, I would have been happy to vote neg on several positions if they had been slightly better-developed, but find that when the negative goes for everything, the Affirmative is able to control a lot of the story in the 2AR. Strategically collapse in front of me, or else you will lose on the neg.
WKU Round Robin: Aff - 2; Neg - 0
WKU Round 3: Voted for Lafayette College ZS as the Affirmative over Hillsdale College KA
WKU Round 4: Voted for Marshall University MO as the Affirmative over WKU RH.
WKU Round 5: Voted for Hillsdale BH as the Affirmative over WKU JC
WKU Round 6: Voted for Lafayette College JH as the Affirmative over WKU CE
WKU QF - Voted for Hillsdale IH as the Affirmative over WKU TP.
Crowder Round 1:
Crowder Round 2:
Crowder Round 3:
Crowder Round 4:
Crowder Sems:
CMO Round 1:
CMO Round 2:
CMO Round 3:
CMO Round 4:
CMO Quarters:
CMO Sems:
CMO 2 Round 1:
CMO 2 Round 2:
CMO 2 Round 3:
CMO 2 Round 4:
SMO 2 Quarters:
Because I'm only a couple years out of competition and this is my first year professionally coaching, my paradigm is likely going to change between tournaments or even rounds. As such, you should ALWAYS ask for a paradigm from me before the round starts. You should also always use full prep time in front of me; I have seen debaters lose on obvious arguments because they get cocky - because of the frequency with which this happens, I now have a policy of deducting speaker points from anybody who fails to use their full prep time before the end of the round.
Stock issues:
I believe that the affirmative has a basic burden to meet and prove all the stock issues, and that they cannot be turned without a kritikal framework. I am willing to buy kritikal turns from the affirmative, but they must be designed in such a way as to afford room for debate in the 1NR, since otherwise the affirmative can answer any rebuttals in the 2AR and skew the negative. In particular, I absolutely will not vote for new arguments in the 2AR, nor will I grant new warrants to arguments on the matter. The fact that you're topical, that you solved, etc., is simply demonstration that you met a burden of proof. The neg can run those positions and kick all they like, since the neg is testing the Affirmative's job. Full stop.
I am an educator at heart and am especially concerned with weighing the relationship between the standards debate and how we engage in debate; even though debate is a game, it is a game justified by its educational role, and overtures to that effect will be generally persuasive for me. Regarding theory debates and K debates, be sure that your framework addresses the capacity of debate to educate students in and out of round. I'm less concerned with abusively non-topical cases that force people to debate hard, and more concerned with abusively non-topical cases that make depth of discussion impossible on a fundamental level.
I have yet to hear a convincing "you have lit, therefore no abuse" claim. I still accept these if the neg does not contest them.
On solvency in particular: I grant the negative structural bias here, meaning that the Aff has to give me a definite, certain impact. I don't like arguments such as "risk of solvency," since those really just come across to me as an attempt to jack presumption belonging to the neg. If the round turns out to be a total clusterfuck, I won't pass a plan based on ambiguous risk of solvency. So focus on an impact that you can actually win, rather than muddling the round and trying to claim victory from it. Uncertainty is neg ground.
Off-case debates:
I need clarity on heg scenarios - hard power and soft power aren't purely interchangeable, and several heg scenarios treat this as if it were the case.
With politics, I need to know with whom political capital is spent. Political capital isn't totally interchangeable between groups, and a clear PC scenario is important to me voting on tix. Not to mention that I think a lot of tix debates really have underlying differences in how fiat functions related to plan passage; if you can be more explicit on what you think fiat does and doesn't grant in the policy realm, that'll help you a lot.
For the Kritik, I need a clear theory of the ballot. Simply indicting the plan and/or the rhetoric isn't enough. Because the ballot traditionally assumes a world-comparison re: fiat, the kritik needs to establish not only a basic framework but an articulation of how I can decide who wins or loses the round. I like kritiks in general, but need cards that are more focused on logical proofs than on sharp rhetoric. I've seen too many bad K cards that just make broad, sweeping assertions and are chosen for fiery rhetoric rather than specific indicts of a plan in a nuanced fashion. The K, for me, then, is like anime: I have nothing against the genre, but there's a lot of absolute crap in the genre, and there's nothing worse than sitting through a bad one.
On-case debates:
I enjoy a debate with critical impacts, but I still need a theoretical framework through which critical impacts interact with more traditional quantifiable impacts. "Is the root cause" won't do, but "is foundational to further reform" has a better story.
If there is terminal defense on the case, I don't vote for "risk." Risk is destroyed if defense is terminal and I'll default to the negative on presumption in such a case. However, heavily mitigated solvency still leaves room for improvement, and absent offense (or if offense is even murkier), I vote for the potential to improve the world through fiat.
I'll update this later, but I thought I'd get it started during work.
How to earn speaker points:
1) Interact with the evidence, and actually read your opponent's evidence.
2) Crystallize the round without oversimplifying.
3) Be honest about the limitations of your own evidence, and account for it when weighing.
4) Collapse to winning positions and leverage them.
5) Use full prep time.
6) Tell a clear story for each position.
7) Don't be dismissive of your opponent; apply the principle of charity and win by having more nuance than them.
8) Use cross-ex profitably; destroy a position rather than blipping all over the flow.
If you have any questions, or if you feel that my judging paradigm is incomplete, please feel free to email me at trainey@wileyc.edu.